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Munk Debate makes privacy a public concern

The topic at Friday’s Munk Debate at Roy Thomson Hall: “Be it resolved that state surveillance is a legitimate defence of our freedoms.”

Privacy rights guru, Glenn Greenwald, who channelled revelations by former NSA official Edward Snowden, above, on U.S. government data collection will be one of the keynote debaters at the Munk Debate on Friday in Toronto. (NELSON ALMEIDA / AFP/GETTY IMAGES file photo)

Do you have the feeling that someone is following your every move? Listening in on your phone calls? Reading your emails? Monitoring your social media? Even scanning your bar bills and overdrafts?

Ten years ago, that might have got you a prescription for Valium, or a referral to a friend’s psychotherapist.

But those days are long gone: now that Big Brother feeling is us.

Surveillance by private corporations and governments is so much part of daily life that many don’t even notice it any more. Yet the surprises just keep on coming.

In Canada, we discovered this week, government agencies have made requests to snoop on the telecom and social media data of 1.2 million people, and the providers aren’t likely saying no. In the U.S., reports of government spying are so widespread most people have lost track of the hacks.

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So it’s not surprising that Friday’s Munk Debate at 7 p.m. in Roy Thomson Hall is so sold out that people are advertising tickets on Kijiji. The topic: “be it resolved that state surveillance is a legitimate defence of our freedoms.”

The debate, sponsored by the Toronto-based Aurea Foundation, features one of the marquee names in electronic privacy rights, Glenn Greenwald, who channelled former NSA official Edward Snowden’s revelations on U.S. government data collection into the international media, and recently won a Pulitzer Prize.

He is partnered with Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian on the “no” side. The “pros” are Gen. Michael Hayden, formerly one of the highest-ranking intelligence officers in Washington, and contrarian civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz.

On the surface, it seems that Hayden and Dershowitz will be fighting an uphill battle to win points for the widely decried government surveillance programs — America’s being the largest in the world, and reportedly pulling in data even from the leaders of foreign countries.

But, Hayden told the Star, “the reality is that the NSA and other (international) agencies are being overwhelmed by the volume of modern communication. We’ve always struggled against volume. But now we’ve just decided that if you can’t fight it you’ve got to make it your friend.”

While Snowden’s reports speak of sweeping surveillance, Hayden argues, people are confused between data collection and personal spying.

“Metadata collection is done on a daily basis by the NSA. That is bulk collection. (At that stage) there has been no surveillance yet.”

Only after getting intelligence about a potentially terrorism-related phone call with a foreign country would operatives “go into the lockbox” of data that is stored and connect the dots, he added.

In spite of the secretive nature of data collection, Hayden contends, in a democracy the people will decide what is tolerable versus what keeps them safe, even if it means more restraint on security services.

“We will self-restrain in some areas, be more transparent and have additional oversight in other areas. That imposes an operational cost. We’ll be less good at what we do, but citizens will be more comfortable.”

Surveillance, Dershowitz will argue, is less of a dragnet than a way of stopping the bad guys from doing bad things. “The state is moving much more from reacting to violence to a proactive pre-emptive, preventive mode of intelligence gathering.”

But is there a justification for government snooping on millions of potential subjects?

And does it let us sleep any more soundly if the state is in our bedrooms to keep us from harm?

Not so much, Greenwald maintains.

“Surveillance equals power,” he wrote before the debate. “The more you know about someone, the more you can control and manipulate them in all sorts of ways. That is one reason a surveillance state is so menacing to basic political liberties.”

Ohanian opposes state surveillance for other reasons. Tagged the Mayor of the Internet by Forbes for his vast, cyber-clamouring site Reddit, he has summoned his online troops to fight off U.S. legislation that would encroach on users’ Internet freedom.

“The world looked at us as a role model for privacy and freedom,” he wrote. “And we dropped the ball.”

The winner? To be decided by audience vote after the debate – and posted on line.

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